AIBU to question adoption checks after this safeguarding failure?

[User05677229]

I can’t stop thinking about little Preston Davey. That poor baby boy, taken into care as a newborn, seemed happy and healthy in foster care, only to be adopted by a gay male couple and then subjected to months of the most horrific sexual and physical abuse before being murdered. How did this happen? How did red flags get missed?

I’m a mum of two, and like many of you, I’ve always supported loving homes for children who need them. But cases like this shake me to the core. I’m not saying no gay men should ever adopt - that’s not realistic or fair. But we have to be honest: the data and repeated safeguarding failures suggest that male same-sex couples (particularly for very young children) need extra rigorous scrutiny, not less.

Social workers and adoption panels seem terrified of being called homophobic. So they bend over backwards to approve placements that might raise eyebrows in heterosexual couples. Fast-tracked approvals, ignoring instincts about motivation, lack of a female parent for a tiny baby - all while birth mothers are scrutinised to the nth degree. This isn’t kindness to adults; it’s gambling with children’s safety.

Baby Preston had injuries consistent with sexual abuse, multiple hospital visits, concerns raised… and still nothing stopped it. Eight missed opportunities, apparently. That’s not just individual evil - that’s a system that’s lost its nerve.

Can we please have an honest conversation?

Better psychological and background checks specifically for single men and male couples adopting infants.

Mandatory longer observation periods.

No more rushing through to meet diversity targets.

Social workers must be protected from accusations of bias when they flag legitimate concerns about any applicant, including gay men.

Children deserve the best possible chance, not to be experiments in adult validation. Every child in the care system has already been let down once. We owe them robust, evidence-based safeguarding - not ideology.

RIP little Preston. This should never have happened.

What do others think? Am I being unfair?

Weird AI OP

No. It’s a tabloid view of things to divide people into simply evil or not.

I have no idea what Varley’s previous tendencies were but given there was nothing to indicate that he had a sexual interest in babies, it is possible he didn’t, until he did.

It is also possible he did and it was premeditated; I don’t know. But apparently this is also indicative of a warped mind at work.

Do you have a source for this, because (forgive me, I’m not personally accusing you of this) there are an awful lot of false rumours and claims about this case.

Plenty. In the past few years the vast majority of children murdered by a parent who have been in the news have been murdered by women. Their mothers, their mother’s female partner, there was also that other case of the woman who murdered the child she was intending to adopt.

What I find most disturbing in these discussions is that people fixate on the sexual abuse side of things when they look at statistics in order to bring down men.

And yet there is plenty of evidence that women abuse children equally if not more than men in other ways.

And what about this child’s mother. Maybe if she’d been a suitable carer in the first place none of this would have happened.

This is about so much more than how it all ended.

Who is dividing people into simply evil and not? I'm certainly not doing that.

But I really find it hard to believe that someone could suddenly realise, in their late thirties, having never had the urges before despite being around children and babies, that they want to sexually torture one.

It's bizarre to believe that someone could just 'become' a sadistic, paedophiliac sexual abuser overnight, because one has been around a fretful baby for several weeks.

Actually, the stats I shared further back in the thread show that statistically speaking, men are far more likely to murder their children than women, despite the fact that women do the vast majority of the childcare.

And you watched them?

I mean tattle life is a complete sesspit where I imagine plenty of people got a kick out of watching those kinds of videos. And none of them should be freely available to view anywhere other than in a court setting.

Anyone who chooses to watch that kind of footage is just as disturbed as the sicko’s who carry out that kind of abuse.

That’s just nonsense. Any social worker I’ve known fears a child in their caseload coming to harm, more than any accusation, and are trying to balance the risk of that with many other factors. I’m not saying poor practice isn’t an issue here, it could be, but we have to look at the systems these workers are trying to practice in as well, and how skilled abusers are at deceiving - it’s literally part of the mechanism of abuse.

I know more people who have been abused by women than men. I.e. by parents.

I come from a background of disability, and where plenty of people have been disabled by their mothers.

And the difference is that usually when a man murders a baby we call it murder. When a woman murders her children the bleeding hearts call it mental health issues.

*cesspit

I wouldn't want to watch that footage (I assume things like Preston having 'boo' shouted at him) either, but it's astoundingly, mindbogglingly hyperbolic to say that watching it would make someone as disturbed as the convicted rapists in this case.

What change?

In fact maybe we need to look at it another way.

If we’re going to say off the back of one case, that gay men should not be allowed to adopt, then perhaps we should also say that women with PND should have their children removed, given the fact that so many of them end up murdering them.

You can’t have it both ways. If one incident means all risk should be removed, then that should apply to any case where a child has come to harm, including things like mental illness.

As soon as a risk factor is introduced then the child should be the one considered.

So if a man is more likely to abuse and you say men shouldn’t be allowed to adopt, then you have to concede that women with post partum issues should have their children removed for their safety.

No? Didn’t think so.

And what happens to the hundreds of children each year currently adopted by single men or gay couples?

Mother's are statistically more likely to murder newborns and children under 5.

What utter rubbish, yes social workers need to guard against acting on their own bias - we work with people in the margins of society who for many different reasons experience discrimination and disadvantage. It’s important our decision making is as evidence based as possible, without making blanket judgements.

I don’t know anyone in my profession who would rather risk a child’s life than be viewed as racist or homophobic. The reality is people do make assumptions based on a whole range of characteristics (many of which are protected under the equalities act, many of which aren’t), social workers need to be clear they aren’t doing that. As for career ending, what do you think it does to your career, not to mention your every day life, to loose a child on your watch.

Statistics on that?

As the Australian and US studies I've encountered in regards to that show things more along these lines -

In a major 32-year study of U.S. filicide arrests, it was found that:
Among offenders, while fathers were about equally likely to kill an infant, they were more likely to be the alleged murderer of children older than a year, especially when the children were adults (fathers were the offenders in 78.3 percent of those cases). Overall, fathers were the accused murderer 57.4 percent of the time.

Children are also at risk from a lack of adopters, foster care is significantly linked to more bad outcomes than adoption so more kids spending a long time in foster care isn't risk free either. Neither is keeping lots of kids where there are concerns because theres no room in foster care either.

Obviously adopters need to be safe, but having too few adopters also increases risk

When I went through the approval process to foster I think I had to have around six references. Three of these people were visited. My young children were interviewed as was my ex husband. I’m assuming similar procedures are in place for adoption. I’m also assuming many potential adopters would have wanted a healthy baby boy. My concerns are that this interest in abusing children did not just start after the adoption. People knew and no one said anything. Either ex partners ( were they interviewed?) colleagues or friends and family. Someone knew or suspected but no one spoke out

Agreed. I don’t think a gay male couple should be allowed to adopt or foster a child.

I am aware that they shouted ‘boo’ and woke Preston up, but that is not sexual abuse, and without the other factors in this case on its own is unremarkable.

It is a nasty example of a completely wrong attitude towards a baby.

People did not know. There was nothing to know.

I know people simply cannot accept it and I don’t know why. I can’t say what went through their heads, but there was nothing to indicate a sexual interest in children: not on their phones or laptops, not from work, not from friends or ex partners. There was just nothing to comment on.